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A SEEION 



PREACHED ON THE LORD'S DAY, 



DECEMBER 22d, 1850, V 



THE 



TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 

BY SAMUEL W. S. DUTTON, 

PASTOR OF THE NORTH CHURCH, NEW HAVEN, CT. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 




NEW HAVEN: 

A. H. MALTBY, No. 67 CHAPEL STREET. 
1851. 



€^t M^nB nf Mm (iEttglEuL— EHiginu tljnr ruling inntiaB in 
tljBir migrntinu. 



A SEMOW 

PREACHED ON THE LORD'S DAY, 

DECEMBER 22d, 1850, 



TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 



vi^ 



BY SAMUEL W. S.^|)'UTTONf, 

PASTOR OF THE NORTH CHURCH, NEW HAVEN, CT. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



ft "-S-A-IJ) 



NEW HAVEN: 

A. H. MALTBY, No. 67 CHAPEL STREET. 
1851. 



L. V 






Printed by 

STORER & STONE, FRANKLIN OFFICE, 

New Haven, Conn. 



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S E E M N. 



" Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt ; thou hast cast out the heathen and planted 
it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled 
the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it ; and the boughs thereof 
were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs to the sea and her branches 
to the river." — Psalm lixx, 8-11. 

This is the twenty-second day of December — the month, 
and the day, on which, in the year 1620, God led his pious 
servants, the pioneers in the settlement of New England, to 
the rock of Plymouth. So predominant was the religious 
character of that movement of the fathers of New England, 
and so beneficent have been its results in their bearing on 
the kingdom of Christ in the world, that the consideration of 
it is very appropriate to the services of the Sanctuary ; and 
so rare is the conjunction of the Sabbath with this anniversa- 
ry, justly revered by all true New England men, that I should 
fail suitably to regard the openings and indications of Provi- 
dence, did 1 not turn your minds to-day in the direction of 
that great event, and the events associated with it in the 
early settlement of this country. 

The cause of this movement, the cause of the emigration, 
of the colonists who came to Plymouth in 1620, of those 
who came to Salem on Massachusetts Bay in 1628, of those 
who came to Boston and its vicinity in 1630, of those who 
came to Hartford and Saybrook in 1635, of those who came 
to New Haven in 1638, and of the hundreds and thousands 
who followed them during a few years after — the chief cause 
of this emigration was religions. They came to this new 



and wild country, in the face of great perils and sufferings, 
that they might here enjoy liberty to worship God, and to 
promote piety according to the dictates of an enlightened 
conscience — liberty which was denied them in England — 
which they could not exercise there without suffering severe 
punishments. 

This position is very important, if we would rightly esti- 
mate the character of the early New Englanders. It is one, 
which, being entirely accordant with the truth of history, we 
should insist upon ; for it has become quite common in some 
quarters, either boldly to deny it, or to pass it by slightly ; 
so that there seems to be some danger that it will be over- 
looked or altogether set aside. On the one hand, some 
writers, who sympathize with the church of England which 
persecuted our fathers, are accustomed plainly to deny that 
they were persecuted at all ; and on the other hand, some 
orators, who care more for civil polity than for religion, and 
more for civil than for religious freedom, are accustomed to 
eulogize our fathers as the special apostles of civil liberty 
or republicanism, as though that was their first and chief ob- 
ject. But no truth is more completely established by history, 
than that religion was the chief end for which they sought 
this wilderness ; and that they cared for civil freedom chiefly 
as a means to the freedom of religion. On this point, Daniel 
Webster has well remarked — " Of the motives which induced 
the first settlers to seek an asylum in this then unexplored 
wilderness, the first and principal, no doubt, were connected 
with religion. They sought to enjoy a higher degree of re- 
ligious freedom, and what they esteemed a purer form of re- 
ligious worship, than was allowed to their choice, or presented 
to their imitation, in the old world." And probably no other 
motive than this would have given them such enterprise, 
courage, and endurance. If they had been mere republicans, 
instead of zealous and conscientious Christians, they never 
would have dared, endured, and done what they did. For 



the same writer well adds, " The love of religious liberty is 
a stronger sentiment, when fully excited, than an attachment 
to civil or political freedom. That freedom which the con- 
science demands, and which men feel bound by their hopes of 
salvation to contend for, can hardly fail to be attained. Con- 
science in the cause of religion, and the worship of the deity 
prepares the mind to act and to suffer beyond almost all other 
causes. It sometimes gives an impulse so irresistible that no 
fetters of power or opinion can withstand it. * . * * Hu- 
man invention has devised nothing, human power has com- 
passed nothing that can forcibly restrain it when it breaks 
forth. Nothing can stop it, but to give way to it. Nothing 
can check it but indulgence. It loses its power only when it 
has attained its object. * * * If [^ \yQ allowed indulgence 
and expansion, like the elemental fires, it only agitates and 
purifies the atmosphere, v»diile its efibrts to throw off restraint 
would burst the world asunder." 

The historical proof that religious persecution drove our 
fathers from Old to New England — that they came hither 
from a desire for the freedom and prosperity of religion — can- 
not be fully presented in a whole discourse, much less in a 
single department of a discourse. A glance at the proof is 
all that the present limits will allow. And such a glance will 
be sufficient for those who are at all familiar with history. 

The Reformation in England, the seeds of which were 
sown by Wickliffe a hundred and fifty years before Luther's 
time, and which received its final form and shape in the reign 
of Elizabeth, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, it is 
well known was incomplete. While it extended with some 
thoroughness to the doctrines of the church of England, 
reducing them to the form in which they are set forth in the 
thirty-nine articles of that church, it affected only partially 
the discipline, government and liturgy, which retained many 
Romish features, deemed by many members of that church 
very objectionable. For this reason there was a portion of 



6 

that church, highly respectable in number, and eminent in 
piety and learning, who favored a further reformation. These 
were called Puritans. Among these were many who, from 
conscientious scruples, declined compliance with the more 
superstitious and hurtful remnants of the Romish worship 
and discipline. These were called Nonconformists. During 
the reign of Elizabeth, those ministers who declined to 
conform to these objectionable rules or customs of the 
church were liable to be, and many of the most useful and 
able were, silenced and deprived of all their employments. 
But, in 1603, on the accession of James 1st, who was edu- 
cated in Scotland and professed to be a zealous Presbyterian, 
the Puritans hoped that reforms in the church would be 
made. But in this they were entirely disappointed. While 
James was on his way to take possession of the throne, a 
petition was presented to him, signed by nearly a thousand 
ministers of the church of England, praying for the reformation 
of certain abuses of the church. The result was a confer- 
ence, during which James said he " would make them con- 
form, or harry them out of the land, or hang them." Soon 
a law was passed to the effect that whosoever should say any- 
thing against the authority, government, or customs of the 
church of England, or should separate from that church, or 
allow that there was any other real church in England, 
should bo excommunicated, and, in consequence, should be 
incapable of collecting his just dues, might be imprisoned till 
such time as he should make satisfaction to the church, and 
when he died, should be denied Christian burial. The Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, Bancroft, with the approbation of the 
king, adopted many measures on purpose to oppress the Pu- 
ritans, and to sift them out of the church ; insisting on the 
strict observance of all the saints' days and festivals of the 
church, and on the use of all the objectionable articles of dress 
which were associated in the minds of the people with Pope- 
ry ; and obliging the clergy to sign the articles over again. 



with an additional avowal " that they did it from the heart." 
Under his operations, in the year 1604, three hundred Puritan 
ministers, who had not separated from the established church, 
were silenced, imprisoned, or exiled. If a^ny one even peti- 
tioned for any reformation, he could be fined at pleasure, and 
was liable to be arraigned, as many in fact were, for felony or 
treason. At one time the wliole body of the clergy of Lon- 
don were summoned " to subscribe over again ;" but such 
numbers refused that the churches were in danger of being 
" disfurnished." In twenty-four counties, there were seven 
hundred and forty-six of the clergy who refused to conform • 
and it was estimated that, by these measures, from thirteen to 
fifteen hundred of the ministers in the kingdom, were forced 
into nonconformity. As a specimen of the persecution which 
the Puritans were called to endure, take these familiar in- 
stances — William Prynne, a lawyer, for writing a book against 
plays, masques, balls, and other things of the kind, was ex- 
cluded from his profession, was sentenced to stand in the pil- 
lory, to lose both his ears, to pay a fine of five thousand 
pounds, and to suffer imprisonment for life. A physician, for 
having published a book which denied the divine right of 
bishops, as an order superior to presbyters, was sentenced to 
be excluded from his profession, to be excommunicated, to be 
fined a thousand pounds, and to be imprisoned till he should 
recant. Dr. Alexander Leighton, a Scotch divine, the father 
of the excellent Archbishop Leighton, for having published a 
book against prelacy or episcopacy, was sentenced, by the se- 
cret and despotic court of the Star Chamber, to pay a fine often 
thousand pounds, to be repeatedly set in the pillory, to be re- 
peatedly and publicly whipped, to have the features of his face 
horribly mutilated, to be branded in the face with an S S, signi- 
fying sower of sedition, and to be closely imprisoned for life.* 



* The following account of the treatment of Dr. Leighton, is from the Life of his sod, 
Archbishop lieighton. 

" He was arrested early in 1629, hurntd to a wrefched cell m Newgate, low, damp. 



8 

But the religious persecution which caused the fathers of 
New England to leave their native country, cannot be better 
illustrated than by a reference to the history of the very 
church of the Pilgrims, which, two hundred and thirty years 
ago to-day, landed on Plymouth Rock. That church was or- 
ganized in the northern part of England, in the year 1602. 
It was the result of what we should term, in these days, a 
revival of religion. According to the account of Gov. Brad- 
ford, one of the Plymouth colonists, under the preaching of 
some godly and zealous ministers of the church of England 
in that region many were awakened and converted. But as 
soon as the work of God in them was manifest by their refor- 
mation, they were scoffed and scorned by the profane multi- 
tude; their ministers were urged to conform, and if they did 



and without light, except what was admitted, along with the rain, from an aperture in 
the roof, overrun with rats and other vermin. Here he lay from Tuesday night till Thurs- 
day at noon, without food, and for fourteen days endured solitary confinement in this 
miserable hole ; while his house, in his absence, was rifled, his books destroyed, and his 
papers carried off. After sixteen weeks' captivity, he was served with an information of 
the crimes with which he was charged, but he was sick and unable to attend, and from 
the nature of his disorder, a fitter object of compassion than punishment, for the skin 
and hair had almost wholly come off his body. 

" Yet though thus afflicted, this aged, infirm divine, was condemned to a punishment 
the stoutest ruffian could hardly have endured, which some of the lords of the court 
conceived could never be inflicted on a dying man, and was only held out as a terror to 
others : it was — to be degraded as a minister, to have his ears cut off, his nose slit, to be 
branded in the face, to stand in the pillory, to be whipped at a post, to pay a fine of 
£10,000, and to suffer imprisonment till it was paid ; the which when Archbishop Laud 
heard pronounced, he pulled off his hat, and holding up his hands, gave thanks to God, 
who had given the church victory over her enemies ! 

" And it was mercilessly inflicted. On the 29th of November, in a cold frosty day, 
he was stripped, and received thirty-six lashes with a triblo cord, after which he stood 
during a snow storm two hours half naked on the pillory at Westminister, was branded 
on one cheek with a red-hot iron, had one ear cut off, and one side of his nose slit: On 
that day se'onnight, ere his sores were healed, he was taken to the pillory in Cheapside, 
and underwent the remainder of his sentence. He was then carried back to prison, and 
shut in for upwards of ten years until the meeting of the Long Parliament: when re- 
leased from his miserable confinement, he could hardly walk, see, or hear. The Parlia- 
ment reversed all the proceedings against him, and voted him six thousand pounds for his 
great Bufferings and damages, and in 1642 gave him an appointment." 

All this for publishing an argument against the episcopacy of the church of England ! 



not, were silenced; and the people were so harrassed by police 
officers and commission courts, as to be greatly distressed. 
At length they began, by the light of God's word, to see and 
feel that they ought not to endure such tyranny, and to be so 
hindered in their Christian life. ,-They, therefore, in the lan- 
guage of Bradford's journal, " shook off this yoke of anti- 
christian bondage, (separated themselves from the church of 
England,) and, as the Lord's free people, joined themselves 
by a covenant of the Lord, in a church-estate, in the fellow- 
ship of the gospel, to walk in all the ways made known, or to 
be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, 
whatever it should cost them." Li other words, they formed 
a Congregational Church. This was in 1602. On account of 
its great increase, and the widely scattered abodes of its mem- 
bers, this church was ere long divided into two. That one 
of these two churches, which ultimately came to New Eng- 
land, had for its pastors, Richard Clifton, a learned, venera- 
ble, and fatherly old man; and John Robinson, a man of great 
courage joined to great meekness and humility — a man of dis- 
tinguished ability, learning, industry, candor, honesty, and 
piety — a man, says one of his enemies, " of excellent parts, 
and the most polished and modest spirit that ever separated 
from the church of England." Their teacher and ruling el- 
der was William Brewster, a man of high rank, who had held 
offices of great trust under the government in his early years, 
a man distinguished for character and capacity, for piety and 
distinguished zeal. This church were so hunted and perse- 
cuted on every side, that they could not continue in England- 
Some were seized and imprisoned ; others had their houses 
watched night and day, and with diiiiculty escaped. Most 
were glad to flee, leaving their houses and means of support. 
At length, after enduring six years of this intolerable perse- 
cution, they resolved to emigrate to Holland ; because they 
were informed that there was " freedom of religion for all 

2 



10 

men ;" and notwithstanding they knew that they would be so- 
journers in a strange land, among a people of a strange speech, 
and would be obliged to gain a precarious livelihood by modes 
of industry of which they were ignorant. But their persecutors 
are unwilling to let them escape. The ports and harbors are 
closed against them. They are obliged to hire mariners, at ex- 
orbitant prices, to come to unfrequented places and take them 
away by night. They are taken aboard, and then betrayed, 
according to an agreement of the shipmaster with their ene- 
mies; are put into open boats and rudely and indecently search- 
ed ; are taken back into the town as a gazing stock; are strip- 
ped of money, books, and goods, arraigned before the magis- 
trates, and committed 1o prison. 

The greater part having been released in the course of a 
month, they soon make another attempt to escape to Holland. 
They form an en_gageraent with a shipmaster from Holland, to 
take them in at a distance from any town. The women, chil- 
dren, and goods are sent to the place in a small bark. The 
men go by land. The ship arrives — though a day after the ap- 
pointed time, during vt-hich the little company were crowded 
together, men, women, and children, with their baggage, on an 
open, barren heath, exposed to severe cold and driving rain — 
and aboat is sent to take off part of the men. They are no sooner 
aboard than a great company of armed men rush upon those 
who remain, and take them prisoners, and also the women and 
children, whose bark had got aground ; and the ship master, 
in fear, makes sail with the portion whom he has taken aboard. 
They, after encountering a violent storm for seven days 
with imminent danger of shipwreck, are landed in Holland, 
without money or change of clothing, separated from their 
wives and children, and the men associated with them : who, 
after being dismissed from the custody of the officers of 
justice, were at a distance from home, without shelter, pro- 
tection or friends. But to relate how they were at length 
united in Holland would occupy too much time. 



11 

" As this scene passes before us (says an eloquent orator*) 
we can hardly forbear asking, whether this be a band of 
malefactors and felons flying from justice ? What are their 
crimes that they hide themselves in darkness ? To what 
punishment are they exposed, that to avoid it, men, women 
and children thus encounter the surf of the North Sea, and 
the terrors of a night storm ? What induces this armed 
pursuit, and this arrest of fugitives of all ages and sexes ? 
Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries in a manner 
that does credit to the wisdom or justice of the times. This 
was not the flight of guilt but of virtue. It was an humble 
and peaceable religion flying from causeless oppression. It 
was conscience, attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule 
of the Stuarts. It was Robinson, and Brewster, leading off 
their little band to find shelter on the shores of a neighboring 
continent." , 

It has been the disingenuous policy of those whose preju- 
dices and associations lead them to depreciate the Puritans, 
and to asperse their motives, perseveringly to confound the 
principles for which they suffered, with some of those trivial 
occasions and tests in which they might have yielded compli- 
ance, perhaps, without any infidelity to conscience. It is not 
denied that there were those among them who took unneces- 
sary occasions for non-conformity. But the testimony of 
innumerable witnesses among the friends and enemies of 
divine right in Church and State, makes it one of the plainest 
truths of history, that real liberty of conscience did not exist 
in England at this time ; and that a multitude of her sons, 
among the noblest in mind and truest in heart, were severely 
persecuted for conscience' sake, and " for righteousness' sake." 
To deny, as some do, in the face of a multitude of such facts 
as have been just stated, that there was any persecution of 
the Puritans, and to assert that they left home, country and 

• Daniel Webster. 



12 

friends because they would not preach m a surplice, or make 
the sign of the cross in baptism, or marry with a ring, is to 
falsify the plainest facts in history, and to defame those of 
whom the world was not worthy. It was for th^ supremacy 
of God's icill, and of the human conscience — the principles 
for which Baxter and Bunyan, Leighton and Prynne, and an 
army of martyrs suffered in mind, body and estate ; which 
Milton so boldly avowed, and in such majestic words vindi- 
cated and sustained — it was for these principles that our 
forefathers broke every tie that made home and country dear, 
and not for any philosophical abstraction, nor for any narrow 
and bigoted superstition. 

I am aware that the facts related in this discourse have 
become in some degree familiar to the well informed. For 
the researches of the historians of our day have done much 
to reveal the touching story of the wrongs and hardships, the 
heroism and patience of our beloved ancestors. But in these 
days, when the principles which led. them to such acts of 
courage and self sacrifice, are assailed with fresh vigor ; and 
the doctrines which they justly hated and opposed even unto 
exile and death are asserted anew ; it becomes us to study 
their example with new diligence, and to ponder the lessons 
of their most instructive history.* 

The founders of these New England colonies abundantly 
declare (and their conduct verifies their words) that they came 
here for the sake of religion— cd^me here, because they had 
not in their own beloved home freedom to worship God, and 
to promote his kingdom according to their honest judgment 
of his will — came here to have Christian liberty and rest ; 
and came, not only to enjoy religion themselves, but to extend 



* If any wish to see full pmof of the truth of the historical statements in this dis- 
course, respecting the persecution of the Puritans, and the religious motives which 
actuated them in their departure from England, let them consult Bradiord's Journal, 
Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims, Neale's History of the Puritans, Macauley's History 
•of England, and Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. 1. 



13 

the kingdom of Christ in its purity and power. Yes, the 
founding of these New England commonwealths was the 
work of devoted piety. It was a movement such as the world 
has never seen of Christian enterprise, wisdom and heroism. 
Those colonists were eminent servants of God, seeking a 
sphere where they might freely do his will. And God's hand 
was plainly seen, guiding, sustaining and blessing them. That 
hand was especially seen, directing the weather-beaten May- 
flower — unable now to survive another gale, with no pilot 
acquainted with the rock bound coast, or its channels and 
roadsteads — leading her to almost the only place where she 
could safely come— within that cape, Avhich seemed to have 
extended its mighty arm of rock and sand, on purpose to 
encircle and protect her. 

There was an incident before the landing of the Pilgrims, 
which well illustrates the firmness and strength of their relig- 
ious principle. " It was the beginning of winter, on that 
bleak shore. They were now to find a landing place. The 
boat was unshipped, but it needed repairs, and sixteen weary 
days elapsed before it was ready for service. Amid ice and 
snow, it was then sent out, with some half dozen pilgrims, to 
find a suitable place to land. The spray of the sea froze on 
them, and made their clothes like iron. Five days they wan- 
dered about, searching in vain for a suitable landing place. 
A storm came on ; the snow and the rain fell ; the sea swelled ; 
the rudder broke ; the mast and sail fell overboard. In this 
storm and cold, without a tent, a house, or the shelter of a 
rock, the Christian Sabbath approached — the day which they 
regarded as holy unto God — a day on which they were not 
to "do any work." What should be done ? As the evening 
before the Sabbath drew on, they pushed over the surf, 
entered a fair sound, sheltered themselves under the lee of a 
rise of land, kindled a fire, and on that little island they spent 
the day in the solemn worship of their Maker. On the next 
day their feet touched the rock — the sacred landing place of 
the Pilgrims." 



14 

The chief object which I had in view is now accomplished, 
viz : to show, or rather to remind you, that the great motive 
which brought our forefathers to New England was a relig- 
ious one. They left a home very dear to them, because they 
were not free there to obey God. They came through man- 
ifold perils and hardships, to the perils and hardships of an 
untried wilderness and among heathen savages, that they 
might freely obey God ; might cultivate their own piety in 
peace ; and might found institutions whose main object should 
be to secure and promote religion in its purity and power, to 
hand it down to posterity, and to extend it in the earth. 
Civil liberty loas with them the means to an end : which 
end 2cas religious freedom and j^^'osperity. That they 
should have organized republican government was not strange, 
after they had formed Congregational churches: for a Con- 
gregational church is a model of a republic. 

It would be well, if there was time, to dwell upon the in- 
tellectual character of the early New Englanders in the va- 
rious colonies ; and remind you that they were men not only 
eminent in piety, but eminent, many of them, in culture and 
learning ; fitted to shine with equal luster among the intel- 
lectual luminaries of any land. It would be well to consider 
the foundations and institutions which they laid and estab- 
lished here ; the provision which they made, first of all, for 
the purity, prosperity, and permanency of religion ; the provis- 
ion which they made for the education of all the people, by 
schools — wedding together schools and churches ; and the pro- 
vision which they made for the more finished education of those 
who should practice in the learned professions, especially in 
the ministry — provision made by them at great sacrifice, in 
establishing and sustaining colleges. 

It would be pleasant, also, if there was time, to glance at 
the results of the heroic and Christian enterprize of our 
fathers, who founded these colonies — at the change which has 
taken place here in two hundred and thirty years — at the 



15 

magnificent growth to which their feeble and painful, but wise 
beginnings have attained. [Surely it must gladden their 
hearts to look down and behold it!] But you are familiar 
with pictures of our country, extending from ocean to ocean ; 
fast filling up with descendants of the early settlers, and with 
refugees from the oppression, poverty, and fearful social in- 
equalities of the old world — a land abounding in churches, 
and schools, and colleges — a land all glorious, except one dark 
spot, with freedom — a land, which, though cursed with many 
forms and degrees of wickedness, is nevertheless more nearly 
under the dominion of Christ than any other — a land, the 
glory of whose future, if God forsake us not, surpasses the 
power of any prophet-poet to foretell or portray. 

It will be better for us, however, to occupy the few mo- 
ments which remain, in considering some lessons which the 
subject teaches. 

We should be grateful to God for such an ancestry. 

They were indeed noblemen in Christ's kingdom, heroes 
in the Christian army, God's chosen instruments in conferring 
countless blessings upon the world, and especially upon us. 
What we are and enjoy as a people ; what we do for the 
benefit of the world by the far shining light of illustrious 
example, and by the power of active and voluntary endeav- 
ors ; is owing, under God, to them. Such a parentage is the 
noblest and most beneficent of all inheritances. To think 
of such fathers, the meditation on their virtues and deeds of 
holy heroism, and on their parental relations to us, is a con- 
tinual fountain of beneficent influence upon our hearts and 
lives. They seem to stand among us, venerable, godly, and 
benevolent men ; and with paternal faithfulness and love, to 
rebuke our faults, and encourage our virtues. They were 
men of prayer. Their prayers often went up for their coun- 
try and their posterity. Those prayers surround us, even 
now — a wall of defence from evil, perennial conductors of 



16 

good. May God give us grace ever to be grateful to him for 
our inheritance in such a parentage. 

But in order to be thus grateful for our ancestry, we must 
cultivate reverence for them, and a just appreciation of them. 

We shall not otherwise be duly grateful for this inheri- 
tance. We should be studious of their history, and familiar 
with their trials, their struggles, their persecutions, their 
mighty works, and their Christian virtues. We should, in a 
proper manner, but effectually, meet those denials of their 
peculiar merits, and those aspersions on their character, 
which the envy and prejudice of ungenerous and unjust sec- 
tarianism have made so common. We should cherish the 
memory of their worth, so that the consciousness of our alli- 
ance with their excellence will ever operate with power to 
elevate, ennoble and sanctify us. We should embalm their 
sublime virtues in story and eloquence, in poetry, painting 
and sculpture. We should mark and adorn their graves with 
appropriate monuments. We should not, indeed, be blind 
to their faults, lest we imitate them. For there is a loyal- 
ty to truth, higher and better than any loyalty to friends 
or even to parents. They had, indeed, manifest faults. But 
these faults were, for the most part, the universal faults of 
the times, and were less in them than in most others. They 
were, in the most important features of improvement, far in 
advance of their age. They are truly and eminently worthy 
of our admiration and reverence. There can be no surer sign 
of our degeneracy, no surer precursor of our downfall, than 
a lack of reverence and affection for an ancestry like our Pil- 
gritn Fathers. 

The lesson ought also to come home to our hearts, dili- 
gently to cherish such institutions as they established. 

Churches, free-schools, well endowed colleges — let us see 
to it that these are maintained in vigor and excellence within 
our more immediate sphere of influence. And, widely as 
our aid can reach through our land, especially in the more 



17 

newly organized and more destitute commonwealths which 
are stretching on towards the Pacific, let us establish church- 
es, schools and colleges, for the intellectual, moral, and Christ- 
ian culture of the whole nation. This is the Puritan policy 
and wisdom. 

Finally, let us learn to imitate the virtues of our fathers. 

Let us not be like the proud but degenerate Jews, who 
built the tombs of the prophets, and honored their memory, 
yet practised the very iniquities which the prophets de- 
nounced, and neglected the duties which the prophets en- 
joined. Our fathers were chiefly anxious for the honor of 
Christ and the prosperity of his kingdom. For this they 
could dare and do anything. Let us imitate their example. 
They had a fear of God above all other fear. They were, 
indeed, good subjects of human government ; teaching sub- 
jection to "the higher powers ;" never forcibly resisting hu- 
man authority, except in cases of justifiable revolution. But 
they maintained the supremacy of God's law, and the su- 
premacy of conscience. They would undergo any penalty 
rather than do anything which God forbids ; they would suf- 
fer any punishment rather than neglect to do, under any human 
prohibition, what God commands. And, surely, it will not be 
amiss for us to study and imitate, in this respect, also, their ex- 
ample. They had a regard for religion which far transcended 
their regard for civil affairs. In that too we need to study and 
follow their example ; for herein truly we fall far behind it. 
They had a love for Christ which was far above their love for 
the world, far above all their loves. May it be so with us ! 
May the God of our fathers let fall upon us the mantle of our 
fathers, so that we shall be their true children, and he shall 
be our God ! 



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